> It quite reliably took people who absolutely loved reading and made them hate books. I'm not quite sure the point of it, really. It took me a decade after hig

> It quite reliably took people who absolutely loved reading and made them hate books. I'm not quite sure the point of it, really. It took me a decade after high school to read a fiction book again, and this is far from uncommon among those who suffered through it alongside me. I pretty much only read science fiction now, and the occasional crime thriller, although I used to be a voracious reader. I din't realize why until I read your post: high school English made me hate fiction. It's like I was playing a game of guess-the-password, and was being graded on how close my arbitrary answer matched the teacher's expectation. I hated it, and it destroyed any interest in reading "high" literature to this day :( I think I can appreciate sci-fi books in particular because my brain knows there's no way they'd ever be taught in an English classroom, so it doesn't evoke memories of those horrible literature classes.